Bike-Share Snare

Why Portland’s long-awaited bicycle-rental program still doesn’t have a contractor.

Software problems have delayed a Portland company’s
bike-sharing programs in two of the nation’s largest cities and may
threaten a proposed March 2013 bike-sharing launch here.

Portland has $2
million in federal transportation funds dedicated in 2011 to starting a
public bike-sharing program to “make the bicycle the preferred mode for
trips of [up to] three miles,” according to the project’s description.

But with seven months
left until the projected start date, the city hasn’t decided how many
bicycles it will rent out, for what lengths of time it will rent them
out, or how much it will charge. That’s because it doesn’t have an
operator for the program.

Transportation
officials say they have narrowed the search to two bidders: Alta Bicycle
Share of Portland and B-Cycle out of Madison, Wis.

“The city has a tough
decision to make,” says Jonathan Maus, publisher and editor of
BikePortland.org. “They probably won’t meet their target.”

Alta Bicycle Share,
an affiliate of Portland-based Alta Planning and Design operating
bike-shares in four cities, might seem the front-runner because of its
local roots. But media reports out of New York and Chicago have raised
questions about whether the company can deliver a working system on
time.

In recent months,
Alta’s struggles have caused those cities to push back start dates for
their bike-share programs from this past July to next March.

“The software doesn’t work,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg toldThe New York Times last month. “Duh.”

Alta operations
director Brodie Hylton says launching three bike-share programs at once
will not be a problem when its new software is bug-free.

“The issues that New
York City is encountering are close to being remedied, and that’s really
the bottleneck,” Hylton says. “[Portland] would not be impacted by
what’s happening in New York.”

Portland Bureau of
Transportation officials would not comment on their selection process or
whether delays in New York and Chicago would impact Portland’s
decision.

The other company
being considered, B-Cycle, is a considerably larger operation. It owns a
large portion of the nation’s bike-share market, with programs in 11
locations, including Denver, Houston and the big island of Hawaii.
B-Cycle didn’t respond to WW’s calls.

Portland perennially
ranks among the nation’s top bicycling cities. But it has lagged in
developing a bike-share system. Twenty-five American cities have
successfully launched such programs.

Bike-sharing systems
in Boston, Denver and Washington, D.C., have proved well-organized
compared to Portland’s 1994 Yellow Bike Project, the nation’s first
bike-sharing startup. All of the project’s approximately 60 bicycles
were stolen, vandalized or fell into disrepair, according to the
Community Cycling Center, one of the founding nonprofits.

Maus says although
Alta is better equipped to handle a project of Portland’s scope, its
delays fuel doubts in a city that’s seen plenty of bike-share failure.

“I am assuming that
there are some nervous people at Alta,” Maus says. “I certainly would
be. These are pretty high stakes, and every time it’s delayed, it just
gives the skeptics more fuel.”